Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [138]
The Doctor twisted in Vaughn’s lifeless grip, tearing the skin that was pinched between Vaughn’s fingers in his frantic efforts to get free. With a last despairing wrench, he finally prised himself loose, and went staggering across the TARDIS console room, ending up leaning on the console itself. He turned towards Vaughn just as Vaughn’s consciousness returned to his body.
‘My ship!’ he snarled, his normally calm voice clogged with hatred and anger. ‘They have destroyed my ship!’
He turned to leave.
The Doctor slammed the red lever that operated the huge time doors. They swung shut in Vaughn’s face with a muffled thud.
‘You meddling fool,’ Vaughn cried. ‘Do you think you can trap me here?’ His brow suddenly creased, the flexible metal skin furrowing into a broad V-shape as he tried to contact his subsidiary bodies outside.
And failed.
‘I’ve severed your connection,’ the Doctor said with a smile. ‘We’re in a separate universe here. Once I closed those doors you became unable to com-municate with anything outside. Any thing, Vaughn. You’re separated from your little metal army. You’re on your own.’
The Doctor suddenly realized that he was shouting, and took a deep breath.
Time for vituperation later. One immensely powerful robot body was all that Vaughn needed to kill the Doctor and open the doors.
The same thought had occurred to Vaughn. He stepped forward menacingly.
‘Then either you will open the door or I will rip your arms and legs off,’ he growled, opening his arms wide to prevent the Doctor from running past.
‘Catch as catch can!’ the Doctor said. As Vaughn reached out for him, he leaped across the control room to the other door, the one that led deeper into the TARDIS. He was counting on two things: firstly that Vaughn wouldn’t dare follow him into the unfathomable depths of the machine, and secondly that Vaughn’s overweening arrogance would lead him to examine the console, sure that he could decipher its operation. Which he probably could. After all, if Tegan could do it, anybody could.
The Doctor knew he had about a minute before Vaughn found the door control and re-emerged into his office. Once he had done that, he could shift his mind into any bot on the planet and the Doctor would never be able to find him.
Bernice watched through the window in the otherwise bare sentry room as the Skel’Ske hung for a moment, stationary in mid-air. Its harlequin colours 234
and spiky, organic texture were out of place against the wet, grey surface of the towers. Her heart missed a beat as she thought that it might never drop, that Powerless Friendless had changed his mind and turned the engines on.
Finally, as if it had committed itself to a difficult decision, it dropped: slowly at first, but gathering an unstoppable speed, and she breathed again.
Bernice winced as the ship smashed straight through a section of walkway with two people on it. They didn’t even seem to notice.
Behind her, Forrester and Cwej were browbeating the INITEC security guards. Beltempest was lending his considerable weight. The guards were trying to refer back to their superiors, but there seemed to be a vacancy at the top. Nobody seemed to know what to do.
Bernice knew how they felt.
The ship started to tumble as its irregular vanes and spines caught the air.
It fell away like a leaf falling in the breeze. The rain-clouds swallowed it up within a few moments, and then it was as if nothing had happened. The towers and the slice of rose-tinted sky above were the same as they had always been.
The explosion, when it came, was distant and quiet. Quieter than Powerless Friendless And Scattered Through Space deserved. He should have had fireworks, symphonies and a vast cosmic thunderclap.
Bernice closed her eyes and leaned against the window. The surface was cool against her forehead. What was it about her that meant that her friends and acquaintances had to die? Homeless Forsaken and Powerless Friendless